Robert Shand was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, attending Milton High School before studied architecture at the University of Cape Town, where he graduated in 1955. He then appears to have spent time working in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia and then travelling to the UK, where he enrolled in the post-graduate course run by the Architectural Association (AA) Department of Tropical Architecture. The AA student register states that Shand was attending ‘lectures only’ indicating he was not eligible to receive the Tropical Certificate at the completion of the course. In 1961 he emigrated to Perth, Australia, taking time to study for an MA at the University of Melbourne, where his thesis was on the subject of ‘Solar Energy and Tropical Living’ (1961). He subsequently worked for a series of Perth based practices, including ‘Parry and Rosenthal,’ ‘Silver Fairbrother Associates’, and Margaret Feilman, before joining ‘Howard Bonner and Associates’ in 1966. He was made a partner in 1968, the name of the practice changing to Howard Bonner, Atkinson and Shand, to reflect this. He remained with the practice until retirement in 1980 and then continued to take on work, as a sole practitioner well into the 2010s. Much of his work was driven by a commitment to the use of solar energy and he designed a significant number of solar-friendly buildings for both the State and Federal government, in the Darwin area.
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